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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714845">Intimacy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesmerized/pseuds/mesmerized'>mesmerized</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, No Romance, Other, Self-Indulgent, Short One Shot, but rich asshole doesn't count does he, no beta we die like Glenn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:27:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesmerized/pseuds/mesmerized</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Your first time is supposed to be special.</p><p>No one warned you about all the clean up, though.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Intimacy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi there.</p><p>this is a vent perspective piece that i think is most powerful when read aloud with intent, but, that's just my opinion. </p><p>there's a lot of personal nuance and love in here and i'm terrified to share it. i know it's not very long but when it was done it was done, you know? i have a lot of feelings about yuri that are complex and hard to describe so i.. did this.</p><p>uh. enjoy?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They say you never forget your first. At the start it's difficult, uncomfortable, but eventually, you get used to it. And sometimes, when it's someone <em>really</em> special, you find yourself enjoying it. When it's personal, you can take it slow, really memorize the look in their eyes as their breathing peters out. The fight ease out of their muscles. The sputtering curtain of blood that squeezes through their fingers as they try to hold the new seam of their neck closed, and the embers of life snuff out.</p><p>You never forget your first. And if you're lucky, they won't haunt you. When it's over, and you're sore in ways you never imagined, you can only hope the bruises and angry red tracks from desperate hands will wash away in the bath. That the memory of heated breath on your neck will fade past unfocused eyes while they stare holes in the tilework. You can marvel at the way your own hands still treat you with such tenderness despite knowing what they are capable of. How they can clean your wounds just as easily, just as readily, as they inflict them.</p><p>You don't sleep afterwards. There's too much to do. Too many stains that don't come out, from carpets, from shadowed corners in your mind. There will always be a scar, a cobweb that snags on skin like phantom fingers, demanding to feel your pulse quicken under its pressure. Plying at flesh for a song, when all you can muster yourself to offer is a sour note. Your voice has always been honeyed, to hide the venom within, but as lavender holds lavender in the looking glass, this is the first time you can <em>see</em> it. Can taste it on the tip of your tongue.</p><p>
  <em>Killer.</em>
</p><p>It's a line you've toed along in the past. Dark alleys and cobbled streets are a cruel and unforgiving place for desperate children to raise themselves like pack animals, but your fingers had never dipped so deeply into the red, especially on such an... <em>intimate</em> occasion. You've never shied from doing what needs to be done. For the sake of the future you've envisioned, for the sake of others, for the sake of whispering in the right ears and making the right connections. You've never flinched from debasing yourself, there was never too high a price to pay.</p><p>You're not even sure what drew this most unholy of actions out of you. But, you know it was right. Or, at least. It had <em>felt</em> right, in the heat of the moment. The pulse pounding rush of acting so.. selfishly. </p><p>One touch.</p><p>One whisper.</p><p>One <em>performance</em> too many.</p><p>The caged songbird longs to feel rain on its feathers. To stretch his wings and fly.</p><p>There are other ways to get what you need. Ways that don't involve swallowing self-loathing in lethal doses during a morning retreat. You can endure <em>much.</em> You are <em>capable</em> of so much more. So, you compose the final notes of this tragic sonata in the blood of the man who would have kept it for his own ears. It will never soar above an adoring crowd, or be pulled past painted lips. This aria will only whisper on your skin, plucked on invisible strings by the hands of friends and strangers alike. </p><p>You will grow sick of the sound of pity. </p><p>Perhaps it's because you think you could have endured more. Idle hands grip a blade, poised at a point to your neck, fingers tensed with every failure, every misstep, how long can you possibly hold it steady? How much longer will it take you to realize you have the strength to set it down? </p><p>Every name your bloody hands immortalize adds another voice to the chorus, joining in haunting refrain. Their limp hands and empty stares paid a price in the name of your bright future, and rather than join your voice to theirs you shoulder their dreams, so that your burdened footsteps harmonize with your stubbornly beating heart. Your very life has become a symphony that has bloomed beyond your control, a choking vine that forces down your failings, tangles your words in thorns. When you belong to a garden, no one pays attention to the source, to the rotting corpse serving as worm food under their feet.</p><p>You have lived your life in some form of service. You have sacrificed for others, and gladly suffered, no matter how high the bodies started to stack in your wake. No matter how deep the scars ran. This is the cost of a life lived beholden to a cause.</p><p>Against all odds, it does get easier. It comes as naturally as lying, as breathing, as pretending you can handle all of this without letting someone close enough to see the cracks in your foundation. Every day you smile with silver as the weight gets bigger, like it's nothing you can't handle. Like you were born to change the world and you know just what to say to make it happen. Because unpacking it all means getting back in that bathtub with dead eyes and a dead-er client, with finger-shaped bruises on neck and thighs like hot brands. It means confronting the phantom of yourself in the mirror. Telling yourself it's nothing you can't handle. It gets easier.</p><p>You never forget your first. You never forget every fallen face, every child, invisible, starving for a chance at life. Your memories become a haunted gallery, where every set of eyes always asks the same questions. What could you have done differently? Where did you fail? Why are you so <em>weak</em>?</p><p>...</p><p>...</p><p>You make a promise to yourself. One in a chain that has kept you alive thus far. Most have been made to pave the way to a better future. One where no child will suffer for want of food and shelter. That no orphan or urchin goes without a place to call home. Without a family. But this promise is different. It is for yourself. A sinful, selfish indulgence. You promise the trembling boy in the mirror that no man or woman will ever lay a hand on you without your word again. And if they do.. at least it won't be your first. It'll be less.. sloppy.</p><p>One selfish vow. Whispered with breath fogging on skin, over the chill of the looking glass. An oath of intimacy.</p>
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